The Tiny River Alne - Omelettes and Omphalopsychites

Earthworms are good for you non-fattening and full of protein. They're plentiful, too, with fifty species in Britain alone, so it's surprising that they haven't caught on as a cheap and nourishing meal.

They have in the States. An American worm farm holds an annual earthworm cookery contest and gets entries of about 3,000 recipes. The winning recipe of a cooking competition sponsored by the North American Bait Company was Earthworm Applesauce Surprise Cake. Anyone who ate it without knowing the ingredients would certainly be in for a surprise.

British marines on a television survival course in the wilds in 1985 had to live off the land, eating whatever they could trap or find. One gallant lad finished up eating earthworm omelettes.

The largest earthworm in the world is a South African species with a record length of 22 ft 6 in. A few of those would solve any angler's bait problem. As would the largest sea worm, the Bootlace Worm. One washed up in Scotland was 180 ft long apparently. Difficult to get into the average bait tin, that...

Anyway with a few lobworms leftover and a couple of hours to kill I decided on a trip to the Alne to try and winkle out a chub, dace or trout, hopefully in that order.

The water was still showing a tinge of colour however nothing like as coloured up as last time and as expected it was much tougher than I thought !!! I somehow missed quite a few bites as well, maybe it was small fish sucking on the worm and giving it a good going over but not actually taking it.

The trout on the other hand were up for a feed, and I managed 3 trout in the end and one dropped off. The chub were nowhere to be seen however and I also fished some big chunks of bread as well.

Not a brilliant session but you can rely on the trout down here as least and they are getting bigger so I'm hoping to stumble upon one of the bigger ones that reside here, twice this size at least.